Taking Comfort in the Bottle
by Aries Draco
Summary: from the kink meme. It's a cold night and the only one he has left is vodka. Belarus doesn't count.


Taking Comfort in the Bottle

The thing is, you never really get _used_ to drinking. You merely learn to function at increasing levels of drunkness. It doesn't make you any less drunk; it only makes you less likely to throw up on your own boots than on someone else's. And when you get really used to it, you could probably choose whose shoes you'd like to throw up on. But the point is, and it is a point, the point is...

Vodka makes things toasty and warm. That's why you put it into fuel lines, otherwise your car would never start. Or worse, it won't stop. Which would be really bad if you were careening off one of the snowy roads on the mountains. Careening off the road, like what happens when you drop a girder on a railway track and your train of thought...

He has a very big house, you know? It's so big, it spans two continents and everyone is so jealous, even though they all say they never want to stay in his house. Except for Belarus, but _he_ doesn't want _her_, because not even the vodka makes it tolerable. No, not her, absolutely not. The house is cold.

And empty, so empty now, even as he wanders from room to room, telling himself he's like one of those vanishing tigers in Amur, and he stalks shadows real good, and everyone will be so surprised when they see him peeking around a wall, except that he's making a hell lot of noise and there is no one.

No one at all.

The vodka's making him all hot inside, like always, always, since so long ago, when he learned how to make fire in a bottle, because it was safer than the water and much warmer. He looks for the room with the fire, because it's easiest to find in the dark, and he feels so hot, like he's burning, but cold burns too, and he doesn't know what exactly he's feeling except...

There's still vodka in the bottle. Happily, he chugs the rest of the bitter elixir, even though his body was screaming at him to throw up. But there was no one around for him to throw up _on_, and everyone knew that the shrieks of disgust were the best part of having to part with his precious vodka.

Then he notices that the vodka has betrayed him too. No matter how he licked and sucked at the opening, there was no more liquid forthcoming. He tries a little harder, running his tongue down the sides of the bottle, in case he'd spilled some earlier, on his way home. For a moment, he contemplates licking his gloves, but something in the back of his mind told him that it was not a very good idea. It was the pesky thing known as survival instinct, that pretty much sucked the _fun_ out of life.

So he takes off his gloves instead, to check that there are still fingers inside them. One, two, three, five, four, seven, blur one, blur time fifteen... His hands are cold, he notices, pouting adorably for no one to see.

He shrugs himself out of his heavy winter coat, because the sleeves were not long enough to hide his hands and the coat had no pockets, and he couldn't reach his pockets if the coat was in the way. During his struggle, the empty vodka bottle drops off the bed, falling to the floor nearly soundlessly. Nearly.

"Are you trying to run away too?" he asks, or he thinks he asks, because the words coming out of his mouth don't make sense to his ears. "No, you're not escaping," he declares, groping for the bottle on the floor with frozen fingers. If there was more vodka, he could make them warm again, but the vodka has betrayed him too...

His fingers close around the bottleneck and he hugs the bottle close, as if afraid it really would run away. The bottle makes clear to him its intent, that it would stay, that it would never forsake Russia. Except maybe for Poland, because Poland takes his vodka more seriously than most sensible people. But bottles, as we know, do not speak, so he had to resort to Russian methods of making his prisoners talk.

"If I make them, they'll say it," he tells the bottle, holding it with just one hand now, because it won't run away and his other hand is so cold it needs to be someplace warm. Like, inside his pants. Yes, that was a warm place. "Say, say, they'll never leave, like you... but they'd all be lying, because see? There's no one left here but me. And you."

He licks the bottle again, trying to get a final taste of vodka before he has to give up, but there really was none remaining. He switches hands, because the bottle is _cold_ without the vodka inside and he doesn't want it to be cold. He doesn't want to be cold.

He moves against his own hand and he feels warm, warm like vodka makes him feel warm, warm like drinking fire or sunshine, so maybe he can give some of it back to the vodka bottle who wants to be taken more seriously. He works his fingers into himself, feeling for the source of the warmth in him, all the while wetting the vodka bottle's long, slender neck.

They have been companions for so long, and it's the only one who wants to stay (though he makes a note to do something vaguely evil to Poland at a later date for seducing the vodka, because vodka was his, damn it, and no one would ever take it away), so he will share his precious warmth.

The silence crushes his voice, even though he'd made no effort to keep it down. It sounds small and pathetic and needy in the empty, empty house, but the bottle is in and it...

He will remember it in the morning: it's too much to hope that he can ever _forget_. He will remember it in shame and in anger, but for now, he shuts down his mind and imagines that being filled is the same thing as being loved.

Notes:

Poland is really serious about their vodka. They were the most vocal when America decided to make vodka from starting materials that were not grain. On the other hand, it would seem that Russian don't really care what other countries to do their vodka, so long as they could continue drinking it.

Timeline: Shortly after the dissolution of the USSR.


End file.
